"It looks like one of those trees you'd get from a fancy store, really expensive and with all the best decorations," says Tuck of our perfect tree, now magically transformed by all things bright and beautiful -- our own hand-sewn cookie-shaped bunnies and piggies (center and right above) and hearts from way back when, gorgeously gaudy Thai ornaments (left) picked up at a local Bangkok bazaar in our salad days, tiny white lights so iffy and easy to replace that we pre-emptively purchase a couple of 100-bulb strings every year.
We've tried for years now, but in our amateur-photography state, we have never been able to grab a shot of the Christmas tree worthy of the tree itself. You have to be there. Pure magic. With hundreds and hundreds of lights weaving in and out of all the branches, it seems to float above the floor.
Caught in the reflected light of a giant mylar bow we found in one of the tradition-laden Xmas ornament boxes, Tiny pauses, transfixed, before going -- where else? -- for the jugular.
There's always something, of course, and this year it's the boiler, with a steam leak in the distribution pipes. We've got a couple of awesome young men from Drew's Plumbing and Heating on the case, but they can't get down to business till next week, so Tuck may have to drive back down to Chelsea every morning from Goomp's -- 1 1/4 hours each way -- during the coming family Christmas festivities to check that there is enough water in the boiler to keep the homefires burning. 'Know what's totally awesome, though? One of the two plumbers is a veteran of the war in Iraq, or so he says. We four -- the two plumbers, Tuck and ourselves -- had a lively discussion re the pros and cons of Operation Iraqi Freedom. There were concerns about the WMDs that had never been found, but the fellow who had served in Baghdad pointed out that Saddam's men had laid out fake tanks and other equipment on the ground that would have been read by satellites as indicating a state of preparedness on Iraq's part that turned out to fool us all. We ourselves brought up the satellite photos of suspicious trucks skulking across the Syrian Border in the weeks leading up to the war. The doubting Thomas of the group, picking up on the take-no-prisoners tenor of our argument, came right out early on with "I'm a Republican." Phew. Who would ever dream of such a debate in the midst of a nuts-and-bolts discussion of household plumbing? 9/11 really did change everything.
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